title: Trends in life expectancy by income from 1988 to 2007: decomposition by age and cause of death.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Less attention has been paid to mortality trends across income groups than those measured by other socioeconomic indicators. This study assessed the change in life expectancy by income over 20 years in the Finnish general population.
  
  
  METHODS
  Life expectancy among 35-year-olds by household income quintiles was studied. Change in life expectancy from 1988-92 to 2003-7 was decomposed by age and cause of death. The dataset contained 754,087 deaths by oversample of 80% of all deaths during the period.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The gap in life expectancy between the highest and the lowest income quintiles widened during the study period by 5.1 years among men and 2.9 years among women, and in 2007 it stood at 12.5 years and 6.8 years, respectively. Stagnation in the lowest income group was the main reason for the increased disparity for both sexes. Increasing mortality attributable to alcohol-related diseases and increasing or stagnating mortality for many cancers, as well as a slower decline in mortality due to ischaemic heart disease among men in the lowest income quintile, were the most significant factors increasing the gap.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The increasing gap in life expectancy was mostly due to the stagnation of mortality in the lowest income quintile and especially because of the increasing mortality in alcohol-related diseases. The increase in disparity may be more extreme when using income instead of occupational class or education, possibly because income identifies a lower and economically more deprived segment on a social hierarchy more clearly. The results identify a clear need to tackle the specific health problems of the poorest.
authors.affiliation: Population Research Unit, Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki, PO Box 18, Helsinki FIN-00014, Finland. lasse.tarkiainen@helsinki.fi
authors.forename: Lasse
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tarkiainen
authors.forename: Pekka
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Martikainen
authors.forename: Mikko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Laaksonen
authors.forename: Tapani
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Valkonen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002423:Cause of Death; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D008017:Life Expectancy / Q000639:trends*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged